The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) appears to have given a clean chit to former chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N.

Chandrababu Naidu in the multicrore Emaar Properties scam, if its petition, filed before a special court on Wednesday, is anything to go by.

It was during the Naidu government that the state-run Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) had signed a memorandum of understanding with Dubai's Emaar Properties for development of an integrated realty project in Hyderabad.

The broad guidelines for the agreement were issued, through a government order (GO Ms No. 359), on September 4, 2002. According to the agreement, the project was to be implemented by Emaar through two special purpose vehicles - SPV-1 and SPV-2.

The first was to develop a golf course, a club house, a boutique hotel and a township on 535 acres of land at Manikonda, while SPV-2 was to develop a convention centre and a business hotel.

The APIIC was supposed to have 26 per cent equity in SPV-1 and 49 per cent in SPV-2. But in the subsequent collaboration agreement, signed on August 19, 2003, a new clause was incorporated by the APIIC.

It stated that Emaar could assign its rights towards development, management and operation of the project to a third party with the corporation's prior approval.

Burj Khalifa, the tallest skyscraper in the world, has close ties with Emaar Properties

This was the clause that facilitated the scam after the Congress government headed by Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy took over in 2004.

The CBI told the court that the new clause By A. Srinivasa Rao in Hyderabad did not find place in the original GO No. 359 and that the then state government never intended to assign the rights towards development to any third party.

The agency blamed the YSR government for allowing Emaar to take advantage of the new clause and reduce APIIC's equity from 26 per cent to four per cent, causing a huge loss to the exchequer.

YSR Congress party president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy has questioned the CBI's decision to ignore the Naidu government's role in executing the collaboration agreement with the Emaar and targeting only the YSR government.

'Surprisingly, the CBI authorities did not question Naidu even once, though he was the one who had brought Emaar Properties to do real estate business in Hyderabad and it was during his regime that the clause on third party involvement was signed,' he said.